Paula's Retreat

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

April 9, 2011; 5 Lent, Year A

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 11:1-45) B Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." But when Jesus heard it, he said, "This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?" Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them." After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him." The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right." Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."
When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. 
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Lazarus was dead and entombed, bound by the embalming cloths that blinded and paralyzed him in that place.  Much of the time, we are Lazarus.  Usually what binds, blinds, paralyzes and entombs us is our own self-centeredness – our insistence that life conform to our desires.  And our fears – the fears that keep us from being who we are, in joyful union with everyone else and all of life. 

But life is far greater than our desires and fears;  more mysterious and wonderful than our small imaginations. 

Some of you remember when Paula D’Arcy visited us as a Tippy McMichael Speaker.  Her books like Gift of the Red Book are intimate and inspiring.  There is a more recent story she tells of a five-day silent retreat she attended for some quiet and renewal for her own life.

She arrived first and watched as the other participants entered.  The first was a young man carrying a guitar.  A guitar at a silent retreat?  “The priest will tell him,” she thought.

The next person carried two guitars.  He’ll have to be told too.

Then a young woman sort of danced her way in, dressed in a long, flowing colorful dress.  Paula thought, “No one wears flowing dresses to a retreat.  I hope to God these people get with the program.”

But that night as they were welcomed and instructed, there were no directions about clothing or guitars.  Nothing.  So Paula went to her little room, only to find that one of the guitar players was in the room right next to her, and he played his guitar late into the night.  “This is going to be awful,” she thought.

Next morning.  Think positive.  But he was still playing the blasted guitar.  She went outside to try to find some quiet.  But an unexpected cold front had come through, and Paula had only packed t-shirts and shorts.  So she wrapped a blanket around her and headed to the courtyard to find a quiet place.  Only…  guitar player #2 had taken up residence in the yard, singing to his heart’s content. 

She spent the whole first day of her retreat angry, frustrated that these people didn’t know how to do this retreat thing.  She couldn’t believe she had to be there with THOSE people.

Next day.  Music next door; music outside.  She took two blankets and sought the far reaches of the property, where she found a hammock and sank into it.  Wonderful!  The quiet she needed for her journey.  But then there was a flash of color.  And there was the dancer in her flowing dress, twirling and whirling around the lawn.

Paula grabbed her Bible and harrumphed back to her room.  Another lost day.

On day three, she tried to find a place in the yard not visually near the dancer and not audibly in the force field of the singer.  But this time she was distracted by an older woman on retreat who was pacing around the perimeter of the house.  “What is she doing?” Paula growled to herself.  “If she wants to take a walk, then go some place.  Great.  Someone else to ruin my perfect contemplation.”  Her perfect retreat was simply being ruined by THOSE people.

Paula took a long walk.  When she returned, the courtyard guitarist was crouching, looking at something in the distance.  Paula was curious to see also.  As she got close, she noticed in his open guitar case was a copy of her book, “Gift of the Redbird.”  She softened a bit.  He couldn’t be that bad…

Then she saw what he was looking at – a large dog, a boxer, with a large chain around his neck, pulling a tire.  Paula noticed that the young man’s eyes welled with tears.  That dog was a metaphor for something in his own life.  She felt for him.

For the first three days Paula had avoided the centering prayer time because she just didn’t want to be in the same room with these noisy, annoying people.  But she went that afternoon, and she kept her eyes open while others’ were shut.  She noticed that the other guitar player from the room next door wept the entire time.  She felt for him, and wondered.

That afternoon as she wrapped her blankets for her walk, she opened her door and found someone had left from sweatpants and a sweatshirt from Target, with a note, “I noticed how cold you were.”  Now Paula’s heart was open.

She began to see everyone with different eyes.  This community had showed her the size of her blinding judgment, the stinginess of her love.  She prayed, “God, help me to see and love people as they are and not as I think they should be.”  She wanted to see how profoundly connected we are.

By the end of the week, Paula thought it was the most beautiful group in the world.  As they concluded in the courtyard for their farewell biddings, the guitar player from that courtyard came to her.  “Do you know what I was doing all week as I was playing my guitar out in the yard?”  “No,” she said.  “Well, I had read your book ‘Gift of the Redbird.’”  “Oh, really?” she modestly replied.  “Something in your book touched a burden that I am carrying, so all week I was composing a song for you.”

The guitar player in the next door room came up and asked, “Will you return the same time next year?”  “I don’t know,” she said, “My schedule doesn’t always allow that.”  “I hope you do,” he said.  “Because my prayer is that next year I might have the courage to come without my guitar.  This year the best I could do is come with this instrument between me and what I was feeling.”

And then she spoke with the woman who drove her nuts for three days walking the perimeter of the house.  “I took the biggest step of the last ten years this week,” she said.  “I suffer from agoraphobia and have been unable to leave my home.  I made the tremendous step of coming to this retreat.  The best I could do was take myself one foot from this house and walk outside every day, but I did it!”

And one more.  The dancer came and found Paula.  “Do you remember the day you saw me twirling and dancing in the yard?”  Paula tried to play it cool, “Yeah, I think I remember that.”  She said it was such a huge step for her because she was trying to learn to give full expression to who and what she most deeply is.  And in the midst of prayer, she felt this deep desire to dance.  She allowed herself to let go and do it.  It was so freeing.  Then she looked at Paula and said, “And I was afraid of the judgment of every one out there, but you.”

How many tombs we live in.  How much bondage and blindness and stuckness we have.  Jesus would speak to each of us – “Paula!  Guitarist #1!  Guitarist #2!  Dancer!   

"You, Lazarus!  Come out!”

“Unbind them, and let them go!”

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I heard an audio version of this story this past week while visiting the “Compassion” class at the Servant Leadership School of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Greensboro, NC.  I found a slightly different written version of Paula’s story online from a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Steven H. Koski -- www.bendfp.org/.docs/pg/400/rid/10036/f/October_4.pdf
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